Rethinking Schools Hires First Executive Director

After 36 years as a Milwaukee based, non-profit educational publication, Rethinking Schools is hiring its first executive director, Cierra Kaler-Jones.

Rethinking Schools is an unapologetic liberal education organization. One of its founding members, Bob Peterson, who currently serves as the Milwaukee School Board president, describes the mindset of Rethinking’s leaders: “We wake up in the morning and ask, ‘How we can build the anti-racist, social justice movement?’”

Beginning in 1986, Rethinking Schools pasted together a newspaper style publication they would hand out quarterly to every employee of Milwaukee Public Schools. It found its way into libraries, local food stores and shops. Its 20,000 copies were free of charge, and the magazine relied on donations and a handful of individual subscriptions.

Its breakout publication was a 96-page booklet in 1991 entitled, Rethinking Columbus. Peterson says they printed 30,000 copies and crossed their fingers that they could sell the copies. In 18 months, they sold over 200,000.

The booklet challenged the idea that Columbus was a heroic explorer and instead portrayed him as an exploiter of the Caribbean and an enslaver of its native peoples. Many of the articles were written by Native Americans.

Increasingly Rethinking Schools transitioned into a publisher of books and educational materials now totaling 25 books. Much of its revenue comes from the sale of books, often required reading in the courses taught by education college professors. Its most recently published federal 990 tax form, for the 2018-19 fiscal year, shows that 68% of its revenue came from program service revenue, with most of the rest coming from donations.

After 15 years of free distribution of its quarterly publication, it moved to a subscription only magazine. It has a national distribution with editors in Seattle, Portland, OR, New Jersey and other communities. It has expanded into book clubs, webinars and workshops.

Peterson says it became increasingly clear that its organizational model needed an overhaul. It was relying on an editor for the magazine, but all other decisions were being made by its board of directors. For Peterson, that meant long hours of discussion, differences and compromises. They now had to manage a $1.5 million budget. They really needed an executive director with the board of directors pulling back to give general direction. 150 applications were submitted for the position before they settled on Kaler-Jones.

Kaler-Jones traces her activism back to junior year at Absegami High School in Galloway, NJ in 2009-10: “The board of education cut the funding for the arts program. Being a dancer, that was something really close to my heart,” she recounts. “I started rallying educators at school, my peers; I got my family involved, community members. I remember writing to the local newspaper, showing up at school board meetings… That lit a fire in me… I was very shy up until that point… Speaking at the board of education, my palms were really sweating, crumpled notecards, my voice was squeaky, but I knew, in that moment, that I had never felt so passionately about something. It was in that moment that I knew I was going to pursue my heart, a life’s work in education.”

Her efforts helped restore much of the arts budget at her high school.

She would later go on to the Rutgers University Dance Team and be crowned Miss New Jersey in 2014 as the state’s representative in the Miss America pageant. She says that title gave her a platform to talk about “Empowering Today’s Youth Through Art Education.” She went on to earn her Ph.D. in education from the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at University of Maryland – College Park. She is a writer, researcher, teacher, dancer, yoga instructor, lecturer, organizer and activist.

She was drawn to this position because “Rethinking Schools is the leading publication for racial justice in education.” She remembers how proud she felt when her first article was published in Rethinking Schools. She wants to build upon “the rich legacy that the founders have set.”

“We are at a difficult moment in our nation’s history,” says Kaler-Jones. Rethinking Schools sees its mission as being willing to confront opposition to Critical Race Theory, attacks on different gender identifications, cuts to the arts, preoccupation with test scores, and support for private school vouchers. Its board of directors is now ready to pass the baton on to a new generation of liberal social education activists.

She will continue to live in the Washington D.C. area, work with the staff and board of directors remotely and visit various branches of Rethinking Schools on both coasts and in the Milwaukee area. Peterson says she will be introduced to the Milwaukee community sometime in either February or March, and will then hit the ground running, and perhaps dancing at times.